Billy Tompson: Yard detective teams up with big business to nail the cyber-criminals

Former anti-terror and Flying Squad officer taps into private sector expertise that is the envy of the police

Janet Williams had a problem. In her career as a borough commander, and as a senior detective in Scotland Yard's anti-terror and flying squads, she was used to having a wealth of experience around her, as well as the technology and the manpower to snare criminals.

In the world of cybercrime, things are a little different. It is the private sector, rather than the police, that has invested billions of pounds over recent years beefing up security on their computer systems. In many cases, it is the big corporations that have the expertise, and the databases, that are the envy of detectives.

So early in 2009, after she was appointed the UK's head of e-crime investigations, Williams asked for a meeting in the City of London with the chief executive of one of the country's biggest institutions. She will not say which one. Williams had a pitch.

If this CEO would share the information the company held on cyber-attacks, then she would be able to target criminals more easily. "I pitched to one CEO and he pitched it to other CEOs on my behalf," says Williams, a deputy assistant commissioner at the Met police.

"I talked through the nature of the threat and the degree of growth. I was quite honest about my limited resources, but felt that by working together we could lever more out of the capabilities jointly.

"Their intelligence systems are better than ours. It would require a new way of operating ? Everyone realised at that time it was a growing issue and that no one organisation could defeat it."

Williams says that 10 CEOs have come on board since then. Thought to be a mix of companies and banks, they tip off the police when their computer systems detect a new threat, and pass on information to the Met's virtual taskforce, a 35-strong unit set up by Williams.

Part of the deal is that the police will not reveal which institutions are helping them. "It's not some secret masonic organisation," Williams says; the arrangement is just a pragmatic way of combining intelligence the firms possess with police experience at bringing people to book. Otherwise, it is argued, the companies would be reluctant to acknowledge that they were being targeted. This might give a rival a competitive advantage, and encourage more attacks from other criminals. So they have all agreed to keep a vow of silence.

"What do they get out of it? They share in fast-time information, trends, capabilities, attack methods and defence positions,'' says Williams. "What can the police bring to the party? Investigating capability. We have got investigators and technical capability and cross-jurisdictional reach.

"We want you to share your data and together we will work out how we are going to catch and prosecute defendants. Financial institutions are keen to work with us, but they don't want specific details of their involvement made public.".

The group includes members of the Chatham House thinktank, who act as mediators between the two sides, organising occasional meetings to assess how the arrangement is working.

Williams acknowledges that without this joint effort, she would be struggling. "Criminals can flit across countries in a split second, hopping from one computer to another, disguising the nature of what they are up to. This makes it difficult for any police service to follow them."

She says it is not unusual for her officers to follow a trail that crosses nine or more jurisdictions within half an hour.

Williams is expecting more money for her unit and hopes to recruit another 20 or so officers and specialists. She likes to get a mix of seasoned detectives and "PhD-qualified people that really, really understand the network and how to investigate across the network".

She has also told the team she wants results quickly, not three-year investigations that get stuck in the sand. "We are never going to get anywhere like that. I want success in three months. We needed a new way of working. Everything was too slow," she says.

Are terrorists also using cyberspace? Williams says not. Not yet, anyway. "I have no intelligence to suggest that. But we are being very careful to ensure that the systems and processes to fight cybercrime and cyberterrorists [are in place] should this become a reality. We would be naive not to."

The challenge for the police is to keep up with the changing methods of criminals online. A report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development this year highlighted one of the trends, and why members of the public must share responsibility for keeping the criminals at bay.

"Rather than attack the well-protected internal systems of financial institutions, [criminals] commonly use malicious software to infect personal computers and steal passwords and personal information that allows theft from online bank accounts. Users are also being misdirected to fraudulent websites that impersonate banks and acquire account details and passwords."

There is also a growing underground industry in automatic tool kits costing up to �1,000 that allow people to produce and launch viruses of their own.

One security expert said: "There is very clearly strong evidence that there is a malware underground economy that has technical skills and is selling them to the market."

The new generation of applications for mobiles is also a concern in Whitehall. "If you go back 10 or 15 years, we would not be using apps on our phones or on our computers," said an official. "When we talked about safeguarding computers it was all about safeguarding the operating system. Now all of us have a bunch of apps on our phones ? and each one may have vulnerabilities."

Criminals, the official said, only have to be lucky once; the rest of us have to be lucky all the time.

Nick Hopkins

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